CA: So they were in the business and they handed it down to
your father?

Carrillo: When my father started out, he worked for Cuban
Land Leaf Tobacco Co., which was an American company that would buy
Cuban tobacco and resell it in the U.S. or wherever.

CA: What year was that?

Carrillo: That was about 1928.

CA: So he worked for an American company, but in Cuba.

Carrillo: He used to be the tobacco buyer.

CA: Tell me a little bit about his life.

Carrillo: He was a man with a lot of guts. There's a story
about him, one time before the [Second World] war; there was an excess
of tobacco and nobody, none of the big companies, wanted to buy any
tobacco.

CA: They didn't need it?

Carrillo: So he went around, he bought everything that he
could get. He would buy it for, let's say, a dollar a pound,
whatever. A fortune at that time. And he had a warehouse in Havana
full of tobacco, I think, at one time he had over 4,000 bales or
something like that. The war came and there was no tobacco to be
found, so the only person to have tobacco was him. At that time he
sold that tobacco; he made a large amount of money and that helped him
to become independent.

CA: What was his name?

Carrillo: Ernesto Perez-Carrillo.

CA: Did he come to America at some point?

Carrillo: He would visit the U.S. while he was in the Cuban
senate, which he got elected to in 1954 and in '58.

CA: The senate in Cuba?

Carrillo: He represented Pinar del Río. In '59, he
had to leave Cuba because he was being pursued. And he was here for
about 10 years before he decided to start making cigars again.

CA: In 1959, he came to Miami, and what business did he go
into?

Carrillo: He had a bar. He had a restaurant. You know, all
kinds of different things.

CA: Was he allowed to take some money out of Cuba?

Carrillo: No.

CA: So he started with nothing when he came?

Carrillo: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My father was the
type of person that money meant nothing to him. He didn't have that
much money in Cuba, and when he came over he didn't have any money. He
never thought of abandoning the island; the only reason he did it was
because he was arrested at different times [for being a member of the
liberal party].

CA: So he came in '59 and he later opened the cigar factory
El Credito. What year was that?

Carrillo: He created it in 1968.

CA: In '68 and he started making...

Carrillo: El Credito. He started making fumas and
cazadores, short filler cigars in the 44- to 46-ring gauge and
different lengths. His first real big customer was Hank Greenberg from
Suburban News, Chicago. And that's how he started making long,
Cuban-style cigars.

CA: Were they a distributor or retailer?

Carrillo: They had three or four stores in Chicago. In the
premium cigars, [my father] would make five or six different sizes and
sell it under El Rico Habano.

CA: When did La Gloria Cubana come into being?

Carrillo: La Gloria Cubana came about in 1972. But that was
mostly sold in the store or through mail orders. My father would come
home at night and go through the Yellow Pages. At that time they had
the addresses to send mailers and that type of thing. And my mother,
myself, my wife would send them out.

CA: How were you able to get the La Gloria Cubana name?

Carrillo: My father registered it. In Cuba, where we had
the El Credito cigar factory, the La Gloria Cubana factory was there
also. And at that time, he had bought the rights of the brands from
the people at La Gloria.